Maffei lawyers move to impound ballots, day before general election
For people who only vote in Presidential election years, this will be the first time using the optical scan machines
Onondaga County's Board of Elections is putting out an appeal, to use the website to contact them, not the phone.
The Board has been swamped all day by people coming in to vote by absentee ballot (which also have to be postmarked by today, or a relative can take the sealed ballot to your polling place for you, on Tuesday).
The website at http://www.ongov.net/elections/index.html has downloadable forms, as well as polling place locations and sample ballots with information on who's running.
If you are voting in person and you've never used an optical scan machine, we have a demonstration for you (we will attach video after the story airs on our evening news).
This afternoon, democratic Congressional Candidate Dan Maffei's lawyers were in court, trying for more control of the ballots. It was a move that offended Onondaga County's democratic elections commissioner. Ed Ryan told us:
"So I guess I take offense to that. We're doing something wrong here and somebody down in albany thinks we need to be looked at because we're not doin it right. He may find that in other counties by he won't find it here. Laura: and you're a democrat. Ed: I'm a democrat Laura: he's your party. Ed: I don't care what he is, we run the board of elections and we do it correctly
After a lengthy session with a judge, lawyers for the three candidates in the 24th District race as well as representatives of the four counties' elections boards (Onondaga, Oswego, Cayuga and Wayne) agreed to follow Onondaga County's procedure for securing ballots, and to coordinate the counting of absentee and paper ballots.
